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Robert Sapolsky reveals the biological basis for our most unfortunate traits—and insists change is possible.

A couple of weeks ago, at a speech before a friendly audience, President Donald Trump likened immigrants to poisonous snakes. To biologist and behavioral scientist Robert Sapolsky, it was a revolting but revealing remark.

"That's a textbook dehumanization of 'them,' he said. "If you get to the point where citing 'thems' causes your followers to activate neurons in the insular cortex—the part of the brain…

To think about how you think: "This is the art of introspection, focused on being aware of such things as one's own degree of alertness, attentiveness, bias, emotional state, exploration of interpretation options, self-assurance."************************************

"Many people choose to remain ignorant, afraid that thinking might ruin their lives. This is particularly true for people who identify themselves with ideologies."https://theunboundedspirit.com/think/

"...the primary level of organization of this commons-based society will be local. Cosmo-local (DGML = Design Global, Manufacture Local) production is governed by the following principles:

Protocol cooperativism: the underlying immaterial and algorithmic protocols are shared and open source, using copyfair principles (free sharing of knowledge, but commercialization conditioned by reciprocity)

Open cooperativism: the commons-based coops are distinguished from ‘collective capitalism’ by their commitment to…

I highly recommend this podcast in light of the censorship of late: (Thanks Cherie)

Clear and Present Danger - A history of free speech

Why have kings, emperors, and governments killed and imprisoned people to shut them up? And why have countless people risked death and imprisonment to express their beliefs? Jacob Mchangama guides you through the history of free speech from the trial of Socrates to the Great Firewall.

Lets liberate ALL of us from the boxes society puts upon us, not create 7 Billion boxes - one for each of us.

From the article:

"So if you want to call yourself a genderqueer femme presenting demigirl, you go for it. Express that identity however you like. Have fun with it. A problem emerges only when you start making political claims on the basis of that label – when you start demanding that others call themselves cisgender, because you require there to be a bunch of conventional binary cis people for you to define yourself against; and when you insist that these…

Life emerges from death. This is merely a fact from ecology — where the seemingly immortal flow of nutrients continuously passes from the bodies of the recently deceased into new forms as it is reconstituted in the bodies of the newly born.

I offer this metaphor as the starting point to discuss how we can apply biological principles to “guide the flow of nutrients” from dying institutional forms for education, research, and social change practice. In a recent article, I explained …